Alfie added "Save Russian Jews, collect valuable prizes (WALTON NEB)" and' that you love will be carried away (WAL- TON NEB)." He hesitated. He rarely added notes, liking his finds to stand alone. Explanation rendered the exotic mundane (or so he had come to believe; in the early years he had annotated much more freely), but from time to time a footnote still seemed to be more illumi- nating than demystifying. . He starred the second entry-' that you love will be carried away (WAL- TON NEB)"-and drew a line two inches above the bottom of the page, and wrote: "*To read this you must also look at the exit ramp from the Walton Rest Area back to highway; i.e. at departing . " tranSIents. He put the pen back in his pocket, wondering why he or anyone would continue anything this close to ending everything. He couldn't think of a single answer. But of course you went on breathing, too. You couldn't stop it with- out rough surgery: The vvind gusted outside. Alfie looked briefly toward the window, where the curtain (also green, but a different shade from the rug) had been drawn. If he pulled it back, he would be able to see chains of light on Interstate 80, each bright bead marking sentient beings running on the rod of the highway. Then he looked back down at his book. He meant to do it, all right. This was just. . . well. . . "Breathing," he said, and smiled. He picked his cigarette out of the ashtray; smoked, returned it to the groove, and thumbed back through the book again. The entries recalled thousands of truck stops and roadside chicken shacks and highway rest areas the way certain songs on the radio can bring back specific memories of a place, a time, the person you were with, what you were drinking, what you were thinking. "Here I sit, brokenhearted, tried to shit but only farted." Everyone knew that one, but here was an interesting variation from Double D Steaks in Hooker, Oklahoma: "Here I sit, I'm at a loss, trying to shit out taco sauce. I know I'm going to drop a load, only hope I don't explode." And from Casey; Iowa, where SR 25 crossed 1-80: "My mother made me a whore." To which someone had added in very different penmanship: "If I supply the yarn will she make me one";>" He had started collecting when he was selling the UPCs, noting various bits of graffiti in the Spiral notebook without at fust knowing why he was doing it. They were just amusing, or disconcert- ing, or both at the same time. Yet lit- tle by little he had become fascinated with these messages from the interstate, where the only other communications seemed to be dipped headlights when you passed in the rain, or maybe some- body in a bad mood flipping you the bird when you went by in the passing lane pulling a rooster-tail of snow be- hind you. He came gradually to see-or perhaps only to hope-that something was going on here. The e. e. cummings lit of "Poopie doopie you so loopy;" for instance, or the inarticulate rage of "1380 West Avenue kill my mother TAKE HER]EWELS." Or take this oldie: "Here I sit, cheeks a-flexin', giving birth to another Texan." The metre, when you considered it, was odd. Not iambs but some odd triplet formula with the stress on the third: "Here I sit, cheeks a -ftexin', giving birth to another Texan." O.K., it broke down a little at the end, but that somehow added to its memorability, gave it that final mnemonic twist of the tail. He had thought on many occasions that he could go back to school, take some courses, get all that feet-and-metre stuff down pat. Know what he was talking about instead of running on a tightrope of intuition. All he really remembered clearly from school was iambic pen- tameter: "To be or not to be, that is the question." He had seen that in a men's room on 1-70, actually; to which some- one had added, "The real question is who your father was, dipstick." These triplets, now. What were they called? Was that trochaic? He didn't know. The fact that he could find out no longer seemed important, but he could find out, yes. It was something people taught; it was no big secret. Or take this variation, which Alfie had also seen all over the country: "Here I sit, on the pooper, giving birth to a Maine state trooper." It was always Maine, no matter where you were it was always Maine State Trooper, and why? Because no other state would scan. Maine was the only one of the fifty whose name SAHARA COSMETICS Hawaiian natura] cosmetics by mail. Send a written request for a free 3 step instant beauty sample kit. :" 'A' ":. "-'"",,';..' ï: ;,.:;;'. .:.'" .. > _..., I f --r -== .,'.. ,'". .. .... - ,,\',,' .0' II .,... ,--; .. ;. ".. ..ï- " , ". ..,'..' .... - : :: . '!" ' .... ";'I' ........-. - .. 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